Quirky Raises $79 Million, Including $30 Million From GE

Quirky said Wednesday it raised $79 million from a group of investors, including $30 million from General Electric.

The New York start-up, which helps inventors turn their ideas into products, said Andreessen Horowitz, Norwest Venture Partners, RRE and Kleiner Perkins Caufield Perkins participated in the Series D funding. The deal with GE expands an previously existing partnership between the companies and is aimed at speeding the creation and delivery of connected home products over the next five years, and a platform to get all the products talking to one another. As part of the deal, GE is taking a minority stake in Quirky.

Quirky and GE already have churned out four products in the connected-device market in time for the holidays, including an egg tray and a power strip. The products fall into the category of Internet of Things — a broad catchall term that basically means connecting everyday gadgets and products, like a refrigerator or an alarm clock, to the Internet. The upsides: warnings when you are low on milk, a clock that automatically adjusts to daylight savings, a thermostat that kicks into action when you are close to arriving at home. The downsides: all the perils of that come with being connected to the Internet.

Nest Labs, a Silicon Valley start-up founded by Apple alums, made some hay last month with news of its Internet-connected smoke detector. It already has released a “smart” thermostat. The products do more than their old-world predecessors — and tend to cost a chunk more, too. In its press release, Quirky foresees the market for connected devices as $25 billion.